Lee/Roja sounds pretty good. I don’t know this would do better numbers than H2L on iPPV but, if the buzz was strong enough for that one match, I think it’d do pretty good for a show wiht nothing else on it.

There’s no time tonight, and there’s a lot to talk about Rey de Reyes. This is one of those times where I feel like getting the official recap will add a lot, so look for more tomorrow. There’s two big outside the ring stories:

Impact Wrestling and AAA did announce a partnership in ring about halfway thru the show, as Impact had teased on Twitter earlier this weekend. Afterwards, Jeff Jarrett made a point of noting they were allied with both AAA & The Crash – as far as they see it, Impact wants to deal with both and isn’t leaving The Crash for AAA. That makes sense for them, Impact’s goal here is just to get their guys booked right now. AAA must’ve at least told Impact they were OK with The Crash being involved for it to get this far. Impact should’ve let The Crash know about this in advance if they were going to make a deal with AAA if they wanted to maintain the relationship, but we haven’t heard anything from The Crash side yet. It seems inevitable one of the Mexican promotions will have a problem with the other and pull out, but everyone’s putting a good public face on it right now.

As a secondary thing, this is a deal which helps AAA have enough outsiders for a Lucha World Cup. It wasn’t mentioned in the announcement tonight, but Impact people started following that Twitter account so it must’ve come out. They may have made more announcements, but both Jarrett and Dorian Roldan were pretty heavily booed, which should’ve been no surprise. Jarrett was not in evil AAA foreigner mode, but the AAA fans have no reason to see him as anything besides that, and the Monterrey fans were booing Dorian six months ago even before the latest wave of negative publicity.

Rey de Reyes, like the prior TV taping, had a notable change in creative direction. There were many things happening, even if some of them felt completely random; it’s a total change from the filler TV shows of AAA 2016. It may feel a little bit like Lucha Underground, and for a reason. Not only is Vampiro helping put together the show, so is Lucha Underground head writer Chris DeJoseph. We don’t know exactly when he started, but there’s difference has been obvious. Lucha Underground has been better at getting over AAA luchadors than AAA has the last few years, it makes sense you’d want as much of the creative process involved in that as you could in AAA. Lucha Underground is also presenting a much different product to AAA, not something AAA fans would see as their brand of lucha libre (for better or worse) and it’s going to be a challenge to change those expectations from afar. There seemed to people who liked all the chaos and twists of tonight’s show, and some who were put off by all the changes in the card.

There’s a sense – and I know I’ve helped propagate it – that all the LU people are with The Crash and not AAA and I don’t think that’s quite right now. Vampiro & DeJospeph are here. They’re planning in Mundo sticking around, and Taya probably is too. Kevin Kross, who’s signed by LU but probably won’t appear in-ring this season, started tonight. Everyone’s got their own feelings about things and it makes it hard to paint one group as the good guys or bad guys.

Impact has a talent exchange agreement with The Crash, bringing in Laredo Kid & Garza Jr. for the last set of tapings in exchange for Jarrett and others working The Crash shows

Impact has had a a similar agreement with AAA in past years, most recently sending talent to the Lucha World Cup

Impact pretty much just wants to book their guys out as much as possible to anyone credible who will take them, becuase it’s a revenue stream for them

The Crash & AAA don’t want to work with each other, and would prefer their partners don’t work with the enemies

Anthem works with Impact – the only place airing the AAA English language show that we know of is Fight Network in Canada. Anthem has had a relationship with AAA longer than they’ve owned Impact. We have no idea how well the AAA shows does, but AAA does have a show and The Crash does not.

Anthem’s also managed to work deals to air both CMLL and AAA shows despite both of those promotions probably preferring the other one wasn’t around.

if AAA still plans on running a Lucha World Cup, they probably needed to make a deal like this (but there’s been no mention of a LWC this year so far)

and then on a much lower importance scale

Rey de Reyes is going to draw the same with or without a not-advertised Jeff Jarrett, though maybe a surprise will help next time

oh no is this another Jarrett angle that goes either nowhere or to a lame match at TripleMania, those are the only two options they seem to have

Jarrett is probably not the mystery person in the Reina de Reinas match. (Probably not Karen either.)

Maybe Anthem/Impact has figured out something where they can make everyone happy in Mexico without being upset that other people are happy? That’s not how understand the lucha libre business to work, it seems like the priority is usually make someone else ad over making yourself happy, but who knows.

Rey de Reyes starts at 6pm Monterrey time, which means 7pm Central/Chicago time, 8pm ET, which means I’ve got plenty of time to take a good nap and hope this makes more sense when I wake up.